One way of making a portal page more enticing to potential visitors is by placing interesting information on that portal page. For example, one might try to entice users to access a portal page by including, on the portal page, interesting and current news stories. If visitors to the portal page learn, by experience, that the content shown on the portal page is likely to be of interest to those visitors, and that the content shown on the portal page is likely to be dynamic, updated, fresh, and current each time that those visitors access the portal page, then those visitors will likely want to access that page additional times in the future, and with greater frequency. Content items shown on the portal page might be associated with links which, when clicked on or otherwise activated by portal page visitors, direct those visitors' browsers to other resources on the Internet. A visitor's activation of a particular link that is associated with a displayed content item is indicative of that visitor's interest in that content item.
Alternatively, if visitors to the portal page discover, by experience, that the content shown on the portal page is likely to be the same static content that those visitors saw the last time that they visited the portal page, or if visitors to the portal page come to understand that the type of content that is shown on the portal page is a type of content in which they are not interested, then those visitors become more likely, in the future, to visit pages other than the portal page instead. This loss of visitor interest translates into a loss of advertising revenue for the owner of the Internet search engine for which the portal page serves as an interface.
A challenge to the maintainer of the portal page becomes how to choose, from among the multitude of content that could be presented on the portal page, content that is likely to attract the greatest number of visitors and thus increase advertising revenue. One approach for selecting content for presentation on the portal page might involve hiring a staff of full-time human editors to look for (and/or compile or otherwise produce) news stories and other content items that those editors believe will be interesting to those who visit the portal page. However, such editors are only human, and, as humans, are inherently biased towards their own tastes and preferences. The content that appeals to the editors might not be content that appeals to significant segments of the public. If an editor chooses to place, on the portal page, content that is not interesting to many visitors, or content that is unpopular or objectionable, then the business of the Internet portal's owner may suffer as a result. Additionally, maintaining a staff of qualified full time editors can require a significant and recurring monetary investment on the part of the owners of the Internet portal.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.